STORIES FROM THE WEB

You would think that an NBA mascot who brings a little kid onto the court to play a little ball is going to have said kid play with a member of the home team. After all, the whole idea is to get kids to idolize the hometown players, fall in love with the team, and eventually, when they’re all grown up, spend tens of thousands of their hard-earned dollars on tickets and gear.

However, when the home team is the Utah Jazz, it’s different story. Nobody in Utah is pretending that the Utah Jazz (14-29) have anything to be excited about. So when Jazz Bear brought a cute little girl from the crowd down onto the floor during a timeout in last night’s Jazz-Timberwolves game, he didn’t even bother getting a Utah player to play catch with her. Instead, he hooked her up with the league’s most exciting passer—Minnesota’s Ricky Rubio—and the two of them played a little catch.

I don’t know if she had any idea who Ricky Rubio is, but I’m guessing her dad thought it was pretty awesome.